BigBasket Enters The Dark Stores Race — Here's How It Stacks Up Against Swiggy, Zomato

Online grocery retailer BigBasket plans to add up to 400 dark stores to its existing line of over 400, according to co-founder Vipul Parekh. This is likely to take the company's dark store count to around 800 by the end of the fiscal, compared to Zomato Ltd. and Swiggy Ltd.'s guidance of over 1,000 stores for the financial year end.

For the uninitiated, dark stores are distribution centres or warehouses used by quick commerce entities for fulfilling online orders.

BigBasket also has an average order value of over Rs 700 and a gross order value of over $1 billion, Parekh told NDTV Profit in an interview on the sidelines of the Confederation of Indian Industries' fifteenth National FMCG Summit.

Average order value is defined as the amount that a customer spends per order on a particular platform. Gross order value is defined as the sum of all transacted orders.

"Our AOV is the highest in the quick commerce industry today. We have been growing quite well, and I think we will continue to grow well," he said.

BigBasket's Rs 700-plus quick commerce AOV is higher than listed peers Zomato Ltd. and Swiggy Ltd.'s, which stand at Rs 660 and Rs 499 as of the September quarter. In terms of GOV, Zomato's Blinkit is at Rs 6,132 crore while Swiggy's Instamart is at Rs 3,382.

On the dark stores front, Blinkit has 791 dark stores currently, while Instamart has 609. Both companies plan to have over 1,000 stores by the end of the fiscal.

Meanwhile, Zomato says that it is on track to achieve the 1,000 dark stores mark by April 2025, and followed this up with a Rs 8,000 crore qualified institutional placement for good measure. The funds of the QIP are meant to be used for setting up of dark stores and warehouses, which will aid in the expansion of the Blinkit business.

Sriharsha Majety, Swiggy's Managing Director and Group CEO, had told shareholders in a letter that "Swiggy Instamart plans to double its dark store count by March, 2025, versus 523 on March, 2024."

Speaking on BigBasket's dark stores and expansion plans, Parekh said, "We have about 400 dark stores today and are looking to add about 300 to 400 more over the next four months."

He added that the Tata Group-owned grocer commands a "decent market share, and we are happy with what we have today."